1444925 - [meta] Implement "Wasm anyref + GC types" proposal: Milestone 1

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: JavaScript: WebAssembly, enhancement, P1)

Description

[Lars T Hansen [:lth]]

"Wasm anyref + GC types" is a set of evolving MVP proposals for interacting with a GC'd host language and providing some of that host language's GC and object management services to wasm, so that source languages with relatively simple needs can be compiled to wasm and can use the host language's GC'd types for its own GC'd storage (without using flat memory, or without using it much).

There are many ideas in this space and most are not baked yet.

Milestone 1 is the first part of a prototype that will serve as a test bed for validating some of these ideas.  It will likely encompass:

- anyref and associated machinery, at any rate enough to allow compiled wasm to
  talk about gc'd types
- some kind of type system for describing objects
- some kind of reflection in the host language (JS) of those objects, probably
  related to TypedObjects
- some kind of support in binaryen to allow host languages to target the new
  types and instructions.

(Vagueness intentional.)